Brussels, 05/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - European Parliament President Martin Schulz repeated his call to the Iranian authorities on Friday 2 March to release political opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, who have been under house arrest since February 2011, and for the country to move towards greater democracy. Schulz said that the Iranian legislative elections, “independently from the turnout, fall short of any democratic standards and are merely a way of measuring internal power struggles within the regime”. “The Iranian people do not have a possibility to choose their preferred candidates due to the discretionary vetting process. Even if their candidates did stand in the elections, there would be no certainty that the official results would not be thwarted, as it happened in 2009”, he regretted, stating that the elections of 2 March were not “a slap in the face for arrogant powers” of the West, but “a slap in the face for Iranian citizens”. The supporters of the Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took 224 of the 290 seats. Reformers, who boycotted the elections, took 19. (CG/transl.rt)